Tag Archives: Photography

Happy Birthday Mom & a little photo restoring…

Posted in Craft, Documenting Life, Family History, In the Studio, Memory Keeping, Photography by

I don’t know about where y’all live but here in New England….I think it may be finally thinking about starting to be fall!  It’s definitely cooler, it’s actually been damp and chilly yesterday and today.  After a summer with almost no rain it was a bit of a relief I will say.  Time to dig out fuzzy socks and fleece over here.

Fall, closely followed by Winter means more inside crafting time around here.  There is still lovely outdoor time to be had in October but I’m definitely feeling the tug to come inside and make stuff!

Today would have been my Mom’s 83rd birthday.  (she’d kill me if she knew I said how old she was)  I was looking through some family scrapbooks and came across this photo of mom with her doll carriage at around 2 1/2 years old.  Love it.  In complete opposition to my usual scan it and make it perfect routine, I snapped a quick photo with my iPhone and tweaked it in PicTapGo (my go to phone editing app).  Here’s the before and after…

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I used probably about 4-5 different filters and heavily used the slider to get just the right adjustment.  My objective was really to up the contrast and bring out the details of the photo.  Since I’m working with a purely digital image, I love the flexibility to play around with all the options…

pictapgo

Pic Tap Go Filters: Auto Contrast +Fade to Autumn (appropriate yes?) + Equalize (just a touch)

Pic Tap Go Filters: Auto Contrast +Metropolitan

Pic Tap Go Filters: Auto Contrast +Metropolitan

pictapgo

Pic Tap Go Filters: Auto Contrast +Sweet Tooth+Crispity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can go on all day with this.  So I’d better stop, eventually the people I live with will want to eat dinner ;-).  You get the idea.

Most of the photos in the albums are faded out, which isn’t surprising considering…they’re 83years old.  A number of them are even older.  Fortunately, they were stored in albums that were laid flat and did not really see the light of day too much.  The were also not stored in an attic or (even worse) a basement.  Several of the albums even zip shut, which is pretty cool and help keep the images away from sunlight.  So I’d say we’re doing pretty well all in all on antique photos.   I have stacks of albums and a big box of slides to scan and work with ….hello winter project!  I’ll share my progress with the project (and another new big project I have up my [long] sleeve) here as I go!

I have a sweet layout all ready for it’s unveiling using this photo… but it will have to wait until Saturday which is iDSD  (international Digital Scrapbook Day…. didn’t know there was one did ya!).  I’m using a freebie kit from Little Feet Digital Design which will release on her FB page on Saturday morning!  This freebie will also coordinate with a lovely collaboration kit at Gingerscraps which will be having all sorts of amazing sales on Saturday so if you’re a digital scrapbooker, you’ll want to stay tuned for that!

Check back Saturday morning for the layout!  Hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day!!

 

*working out blog-kinks so hoping the photo formatting doesn’t look too wonky on your end!

Back it up and Print it out

Posted in Documenting Life, Memory Keeping, Photography, Writing by

I had started writing this post in February and wanted to finish it up and post it now because is still very relevant to anyone who works on a computer and especially if you are the keeper of the family archives and other super-important pieces of information… so I continue…

It’s been a pretty busy month around here, but by far the most stressful part of the month was when…I dropped my EHD on the floor…and nothing but a tiny rhythmic clicking sound could be heard.

Lights on but nobody’s home!  Yikes, slight panic and that awful sinking feeling of *&@(*^#@  this is going to mess up my day.  I work exclusively on a laptop so I rely on an external drive for storage of extra files including almost all of my digital scrapbooking supplies as well as my photo library from 2013 and backward.   Did I completely freak out??  Not at that moment.  Wanna know why?  Because I back up my laptop and my ehd to Time Machine.  Huge. Life. Saver.

While it was a hassle to order a new drive, and wait two days for it (free shipping worth being patient).  I plugged it in and spent a day and an evening restoring everything from the Time Machine.  Good. To. Go.

Until I realized that I was missing TWO YEARS of my photo library.  2013 and 2012  GONE.  That was the sick stomach heart wrenching moment.  Gone, Zip, Nowhere, went through my entire backup and they were not there!!!!  Probably 20k images disappeared into the ether.   Once I returned from my blackout, I realized that it wasn’t quite so bad because…. I PRINT OUT MY PHOTOS *gasp, I know, sacrilege right?  Not like the old days where you sent in a roll of film, and get prints back.  So while I don’t have every single photo that I took in that time frame, but I have the best of the best printed out and in my hands.

And I’ll update this little tale with…. I’m super glad (yet again) that I save stuff because on an old EHD that I had outgrown…on an old Time Machine backup from the beginning of 2014….guess what I found???? Yep, my 2012 and 2013 photo libraries.  All back safe and sound!!  Digital files and actual prints for the win.

 

 

Dusting it off…

Posted in Creative Practice, Digital Scrapbooking, Documenting Life, Memory Keeping by

I realized last evening that I had not made a scrapbook layout since the end of MARCH.  Yikes!  Life moves at the speed of light around here so part of me is not surprised.  I’ve been working on other projects, sewing, church, a few other projects to be revealed later…so I’ve not been sitting on my hands over here!  But it’s time to dust things off and get moving again, piles of photos to work on and loads of yummy supplies both paper and dig so here we go…

sculpture-park-july-2015-web

I actually used a brand new digi kit from One Little Bird Designs and a template from my 2015 folder of supplies.  Hooray for actually making a layout!

What are you procrastinating about making lately?

{this moment}

Posted in Creative Practice, In the Studio, Photography, Soul Work, This Moment by

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.  If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

 

This moment 09-25-14